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The collection / 191 fragments

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04c. 1850 AD
The fancy I had to-day, Fancy which turned a fear! I swam far out in the bay, Since waves laughed warm and clear. I lay and looked at the sun, The noon-sun looked at me: Between us two, no one Live creature, that I could see. Yes! There came floating by Me, who lay floating too, Such a strange butterfly! Creature as dear as new: Because the membraned wings So wonderful, so wide, So sun-suffused, were things Like soul and nought beside.... What if a certain soul Which early slipped its sheath, And has for its home the whole Of heaven, thus look beneath. Thus watch one who, in the world, But lives and likes life’s way, Nor wishes the wings unfurled That sleep in the worm, they say? But sometimes when the weather Is blue, and warm waves tempt To free oneself of tether, And try a life exempt From worldly noise and dust, In the sphere which overbrims With passion and thought,—why, just Unable to fly, one swims!... Emancipate through passion And thought, with sea for sky, We substitute, in a fashion, For heaven—poetry: Which sea, to all intent, Gives flesh such noon-disport As a finer element Affords the spirit sort. Whatever they are, we seem: Imagine the thing they know; All deeds they do, we dream; Can heaven be else but so? And meantime, yonder streak Meets the horizon’s verge; That is the land, to seek If we tire or dread the surge: Land the solid and safe— To welcome again (confess!) When, high and dry, we chafe The body, and don the dress. Does she look, pity, wonder At one who mimics flight, Swims—heaven above, sea under, Yet always earth in sight?
Robert Browning / quote
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13c. 1850 AD
... Had I painted the whole, Why, there it had stood, to see, nor the process so wonder-worth; Had I written the same, made verse—still, effect proceeds from cause, Ye know why the forms are fair, ye hear how the tale is told; It is all triumphant art, but art in obedience to laws, Painter and poet are proud in the artist-list enrolled:— But here is the finger of God, a flash of the will that can, Existent behind all laws, that made them and, lo, they are! And I know not if, save in this, such gift be allowed to man, That out of three sounds he frame, not a fourth sound, but a star. Consider it well: each tone of our scale in itself is nought; It is everywhere in the world—loud, soft, and all is said: Give it to me to use! I mix it with two in my thought: And, there! Ye have heard and seen: consider and bow the head!
Robert Browning / quote
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17c. 1850 AD
God’s works—paint any one, and count it crime To let a truth slip. Don’t object, “His works Are here already; nature is complete: Suppose you reproduce her (which you can’t) There’s no advantage! You must beat her then.” For, don’t you mark? we’re made so that we love First when we see them painted, things we have passed Perhaps a hundred times nor cared to see; And so they are better, painted—better to us Which is the same thing. Art was given for that; God uses us to help each other so, Lending our minds out.
Robert Browning / quote
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